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Today we are talking to Andy Fang, the CTO of DoorDash and we discuss how they took a small startup at Stanford and grew it to a company valued at 1.4 billion dollars. Having an open mind to be aware of what you don’t know. And how to celebrate the victories while pushing for more.

All of this, right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast

Andy Fang is the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of DoorDash, a technology company that connects customers with their favorite local and national businesses in more than 850 cities across the United States and Canada.

Andy leads the engineering team, and is responsible for the overall product vision, technology roadmap and architectural direction of the DoorDash platform. Andy holds a BS in Computer Science from Stanford University, where he met fellow cofounders Tony Xu and Stanley Tang whereupon the concept for DoorDash was born.

Show Notes

Tell me a little bit about door dash – 5 years old, started as students at Stanford

Goal was to empower local businesses – building a local logistics network

This is the first year it has expanded beyond restaurant delivery. E.g. Walmart Grocery

Landing large companies as a client takes a long time and lots of meetings

Some CTO’s view functions to get involved with big deals

Andy Views his CTO role as evaluating how deals such as Walmart effect their technology stack, how productive the team can be, how the team can leverage the type of deals to build on top of the platform

Paying attention to what’s going on in the landscape with the big players in retail space

Using Door Dash Drive to power the delivery of products

Have gone from small startup to over 1B valuation – Unicorn Leader

When did you notice it start to take off and how did you resource yourself?

No singular Ah Ha moment – Started as Palo Alto Delivery

When you’re in the early stages a lot of the growth comes from the founders willing it in to existence.

If you have a great idea people will latch on to it is a myth

You have to be able to put yourself in to an uncomfortable and chaotic environment

I’ve got this, and I’m going to figure it out is the mentality to have

The people who stay through the tough times come out learning more and growing

Having an open mind and self awareness of what you don’t know

As a Founder, you get trust and because people know you are trying to do your best for the company

Were there any false starts? Encourage people to play with apps and hit live traffic on your own

Excited about Learning about different technologies and how people use technology

Encourage employees to interact with users at Door Dash – Talk to people

Dog Fooding a product – Have the employees or engineers use the product before it get launched

Lessons learned from Scaling Engineering

People really accelerate their career at a chaotic startup or they don’t at all. People join startups because they want to learn a lot

People Mistake Startup with Career Growth

Opportunities to grow in to management will not come quickly if the team is not growing quickly

Systems of repeatable scalable processes

Figuring how to bring in directors / other directors / want to bet on the people who are growing internally, but there is a big cost to people learning on the fly

When did you first fall in love with technology – Andy grew up in Silicon Valley

Fascinating about how accessible technology is today

DoorDash is in a big and competitive space which has led to a mentality of you’ve got the win but there’s so much more that you’ve got to do

You do have to cherish the winning moments as well – have your employees back and that you care about them and appreciate the work they are putting in

Located offices to the center of San Francisco

Advice to previous self – there’s no right way to get to where you want to go – you have to forge your own path

On Twitter @AndyFang

Balancing out a 3 sided market place – Consumer, driver, restaurant

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Joel Beasley

Joel began writing code at age 13 selling his first technology by age 18 for one million dollars. In his first three transactions, he developed key relationships and began working with Investors and Chief Technology Officers collaborating and building products in Real Estate, Law, Finance, and Fitness.

Today, Joel is a Chief Technologist volgging the process of building a company LeaderBits.io. Joel is an author of the book Modern CTO a #1 New Release on Amazon and a #1 Technology Podcast with 70k active listeners. Joel has a clear vision and passion for modern technology, placing him as one of the most exciting Chief Technology Officers to watch out for.

Joel is the President of BeasleyFoundation.org a charity that designs STEM related children’s books Back to the Moon and Princess Physicist. These books are then donated to orphanages, homeless pregnant woman and in-need children. Beasley Foundation was formed in February 2017 after Joel, Mitch and Valerie lost their Mother to Leukemia after being diagnosed 6 weeks earlier. Joel and his siblings wanted to do something unique with her life insurance money and the Beasley Foundation was formed.